In-situ Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (IOAM) data fields allow operational and telemetry information to be recorded and added into a data packet while the packet traverses a path between two points in a network. The term “in-situ” refers to the fact that the OAM data is added to the data packets rather than being sent within packets specifically dedicated to OAM.
The IOAM data fields provide an informative mechanism that can be used to collect path or performance information along a data packet's path through a network. The collected information may be gathered in a centralized database and analyzed using an analytics server, which may implement actions based on the analysis of the collected IOAM data.